From: jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com>
Date: Sat, 7 Sep 1996 15:11:50 +0800
To: jonathon <grafolog@netcom.com>
Subject: Re: Race Bit: C
Message-ID: <199609070438.VAA09119@mail.pacifier.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 06:49 PM 9/6/96 +0000, jonathon wrote:
>On Fri, 6 Sep 1996, jim bell wrote:
>> used to test out hypotheticals, for example a "SimEconomy."   For example, 
>
>	They are very hard to program, and the ones that do exist are
>	based on the usually flawed assumptions that the designers make.
>	EG:  taxation is a requirement for government stability

A few months ago, somebody posted onto CP a phony story, which claimed that 
"somebody" had developed an artificially-intelligent program which would 
take the place of the judge and (?) jury in the (so-called) justice system.  
It was an obvious phony, but I thought it was even more obvious, even if we 
assumed the existence of a program which is smart enough to interpret 
evidence and laws.  

The problem is, the "legal system" is practically saturated with unwritten 
biases which favor the rich over the poor, the strong over the weak, and the 
government over everybody else.  Any program which read the Constituion  and 
the laws wouldn't see those biases, and would start writing 
decisions...respecting the Constitution!  It would presumably view the 
violation of someone's Constitutional rights as a criminal act, and it would 
be hard for the cops to stay out of jail.  The standard for conviction, 
"beyond a reasonable doubt," when religiously  adhered-to would make 
convictions difficult to obtain.  The program would look for Constitutional 
justification for anti-drug laws, and finding none, would ignore such 
violations but would convict anyone trying to enforce them.  Likewise, it 
would read the second amendment (and the lack of authority for regulating 
guns in the rest of the Constitution) and conclude that guns were 
un-regulatable.  The program would see that nothing in the Constitution 
requires people to testify for the prosecution.  The program wouldn't see 
any justification for the judge-written concept of judicial civil immunity, 
or government-employee immunity in most cases.  The program would notice 
that double-jeopardy is prohibited, and would prohibit any retrials in which 
there are "hung juries" or government errors.  In other words, the 
government would actually have to start OBEYING THE CONSTITUTION! 

Ask most lawyers, and they'll say, 'No, that's not the way we do things.'  
In a sense, they're right!  That's NOT the way they do things.  And that's 
the problem!

   This would be considered unacceptable; the program would be declared 
"broken" and "useless."  Sure, it could be fixed, but they'd have to qualify 
and quantify all of the biases currently present in the system, and write 
them into the program in the form of subroutines.  The problem is, nobody 
who actually supports these biases would want to acknowledge what they are 
and why they're there, and nobody who opposes these biases would agree to 
keep them.


Jim Bell
jimbell@pacifier.com